


Sleepless in New York

by Deus_Ex



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Insomnia, Late Night Conversations, Nick Fury Knows All, Past Lives, Post-Battle of New York (Marvel), Secrets, Sparring, Stark Tower, clueless thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-18 02:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3552029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deus_Ex/pseuds/Deus_Ex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None of the Avengers can really sleep like normal people do.  How they deal with it is as unique as they are, and can lead to some interesting nights.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless in New York

It was three-thirty in the morning. No one else should be here.

Clint had enough time to be annoyed at the fact that there was another person there as he emerged from the hallway into the huge, wide-open space of the Stark Tower gym. The lights were already on and the sound of fists slamming into a punching bag was already reaching his ears as soon as the heavy doors swung open to admit Clint into the spacious room. Who on earth was still up at three thirty in the morning, let alone restless enough to give up on sleep entirely and go to town on a punching bag? The high-intensity discharge lights overhead, surrounded by their protective metal cages, were turned all the way up to provide nearly shadow-less light in the enormous gym. Padded walls, staggered layers of equipment, covers, and targets, and ceilings laced with metal rafters and catwalks, the gym had been specifically constructed for superheroes who needed workouts. Clint himself liked to find a nice spot up in the ceiling somewhere and snipe targets. But if there was someone else in the gym, he couldn’t shoot. Safety hazards and all; God forbid an arrow fly astray. No one else was allowed on the range when it was hot. The same rule went for any active shooting zone.

Sighing roughly, Clint shouldered his quiver anyway and opened his collapsible recurve bow. He’d been working with it almost exclusively for years now, and it had steadily become his favorite with its versatility, reliability, accuracy, and light weight. The draw weight was heavy enough to pack a powerful punch, but not so much that it exhausted him. Many people had told Clint to invest in a compound bow for combat, to conserve his energy, but he’d snorted and waved them off. There was no finesse, no romance in a compound bow. It felt like cheating what could be a magnificent art.

Pacing towards the cluster of punching bags forming a loose barrier between the target-riddled training area and the strictly-strength-training sections, Clint kept his bow in hand but arrows in the quiver as he carefully approached the swaying punching bag from the side. Chances were, the person laying into it was super-powered, and if they took a good punch it could go flying. Clint had learned the hard way that getting behind things other super-humans were punching was just not a good idea.

He shouldered his way through the line of punching bags, four in number, and let the cool vinyl slide off his bare arms as he turned to see who was behind the rhythmic thuds of fists against sand. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a bare torso, and sweat-streaked skin met his gaze: Steve Rogers, Captain America. He was punching the ever-loving hell out of that bag like it was Arnim Zola’s face. The bag swung back away from Steve with every powerful hit, tightly controlled and yet aching to lose control. That was Steve’s problem, Clint noted sourly, watching silently for a moment as Steve continued to pummel the bag. He always had to keep everything in. He was Captain America, the image of perfection and the American dream: what right did he have to anger and moments of weakness?

“You can’t sleep either, huh?”

Clint would deny to the death that he was startled when Steve’s voice suddenly split the air even more definitively than the rapid strikes against the punching bag. One particularly-hard punch required Steve to shuffle in towards the swaying mass to get in the next hit, and then back again to avoid the down-swing; the bag’s chains rattled and it shook from side to side as it slammed back down against its restraints, but it held so far as Steve continued to land strike after strike. He’d like to think that he was enough of a stealthy assassin that Steve couldn’t hear him coming. But hey, damn super-soldiers, right? “Nah,” Clint replied easily, after a moment more of staring at Steve’s ferocious punching. Steve had said “too” when he asked, so did that imply he was up not by choice as well? “Didn’t know you were an insomniac,” he remarked casually, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he turned a bit to face Steve more head-on.

“Yup,” Steve replied, his tone clipped as he delivered four rapid-fire punches to the bag, not even retracting his fists all the way. The entire time, his eyes never left his target, and his limbs never stopped moving. Sweat dripped down his skin, every inch of it, soaking into the bandages he had wrapped around his wrists and knuckles. “Figure I slept for seventy years; it’s little wonder I can’t sleep now.”

But it was more than that, Clint knew instantly. If it was just that, Steve’s strikes would be looser, freer, and he wouldn’t be pushing that punching bag’s chains to the very brink of their ability to hang on. That bag was probably reinforced, too, given that everything in this gym was built to stand up to…well, people like them. Steve was pissed off about something, and whether that restlessness came from actual anger, fear, or frustration remained to be seen.

“You get nightmares too?”

He’d spoken without thinking, but found himself whipping it out there as he very carefully rested the tail end of his strung bow on the concrete floor beneath his booted feet. He expected some dry humor, Steve’s usual style, or maybe even just a look and nothing more. But Steve surprised him. He ceased all motion and let the bag settle, chains rattling as it finally came to rest hanging straight down from the ceiling. The loops that the chains passed through were starting to stretch and tear at the edges from the strain they’d been under; Steve was pushing. His body itself also bore the strain of the effort, with every inch of him pouring sweat, his muscles tight and lined with prominent veins, and his chest and shoulders heaving with the effort of his breathing. Clint imagined if he could find a pulse point, Steve’s heart would be racing. When the blonde man turned to look at him for the first time that night-or morning, depending on how you looked at it-his eyes were drooping with exhaustion and his jaw hung slack with his lips parted to drag in more air. His throat sounded dry and his voice sounded just as tired as his eyes screamed that they were, but he replied even as he dropped his gaze, bowed his head, and set his hands, shaking as they tried to uncurl and only succeeded halfway, on his hips, exposed with the way his loose gym shorts had slipped during his vigorous workout.

“Yeah.”

“About what?” Since this whole speaking before he thought thing was working out well for him so far.

Steve just continued panting for a minute. His gaze moved sideways, sweeping the floor, and then Clint realized he was just shaking his head. One hand came off his hips to swipe at his dripping, glistening forehead with the back of his hand; he glanced down at it, sighed again, and let his hands fall limply at his sides. “Bucky,” he answered plainly, fidgeting uncomfortably. Clint was immediately left with the sour taste in his mouth that meant he had intruded on something private and personal.

“I’m sorry-” he started to say, but Steve cut him off.

“No, no, it’s…I won’t say it’s fine, but you know what I mean.”

He turned back then, leaving his right shoulder to Clint, and took another, tired swing at the bag. It connected with a solid _thwap,_ and this time, it was well-controlled enough that the bag barely moved and the chains didn’t jingle. Clint was left speechless for a moment, knowing that the comment was to make him feel better but somehow only feeling much, much worse. He closed his mouth, set both hands on top of his bow, and bowed his head, unsure of where to go from here. Worrying his lower lip between his teeth, he found himself nodding slightly as he contemplated his move from here. He could hardly walk away after a confession like that, and asking Steve to relocate so he could shoot was out of the question. What did he say? Did Steve even want to talk about it? His best friend, falling from a train because he’d been a few seconds too slow to catch him…that was heavy stuff. Clint felt terrible for ever coming down here. Clearly Steve needed to escape some demons.

“What are yours about?”

He wasn’t sure if this counted as being saved by someone else’s good graces. Steve had spared him the awkwardness of trying to figure out his next move, but now he had to figure out how in the world to word this. Did he even want to answer?

“Loki,” he said, deciding that he needed to respond because Steve had given him that. The courtesy of an answer would be rewarded with one, and in both situation, both men knew what the other was talking about. They didn’t need to spend hours talking and explaining; they both knew and understood, and could skip ripping the barely-healed wounds apart and go straight to salving the aches and pains they left behind.  
Steve stepped back from the punching bag again, leaving it swinging from its chains again as he resumed his earlier position: turned halfway to Clint, head down, hands on his hips, chest heaving. For a moment, they were both quiet, lost in their own heads: then, as always, it was Steve who broke the silence.

“Do you want to spar?” he asked. At Clint’s gaze, something between horrified and inquisitive, Steve cracked what might have been a smile if it weren’t so tired and tragically sad. 

“I’ve worn myself down quite a bit, and there’re gloves over there. I’ll take it easy.”

The reassurance that he wouldn’t get pummeled was enough, it seemed. Clint smiled a bit, and it was every bit as strained as Steve’s expression, but he collapsed his bow and pulled his quiver off his back. “Sure,” he murmured. They both needed the company, even if they would never say it out loud. That was perhaps what made them need it so much: they both felt that same pressure to be the flawless warriors they were projected as. Weakness was a luxury they couldn’t afford anymore. But they still felt it, often in crippling spades. And it needed to be recognized, accepted, allowed its stay, and then kindly and promptly ushered out. If this was their way of purging it from their bodies and minds, so be it.

Steve made a move for a pair of boxing gloves, but Clint stopped him. “Don’t,” he said, setting his weapons aside and dropping to one knee to begin unlacing his boots. “MMA?”  
There was hesitation there, and Clint could see the conflict in Steve. On the one hand, MMA was more useful to soldiers like them, and a better, more comprehensive workout than just boxing. But they had less protection, using no gloves or safety gear. Steve’s body might be enhanced, but Clint’s wasn’t. And Steve was weighing his self-control in his mind, wondering if he could keep himself in check well enough to avoid hurting Clint.

“If you’re sure,” he finally declared, and Clint knew it was as close to a, _at your own risk,_ as he’d ever get.

“I’m sure,” he replied firmly, kicking off his boots and chucking his shirt. Risks accepted.

He wrapped his knuckles while Steve waited, getting his breath back. The stretchy bandages wound around his knuckles and wrists with firm support, protecting the skin of his knuckles and supporting the delicate joint of his wrist. The elastic would leave a print on his skin, but he didn’t mind it so much. He’d scratch the prickles away and shower to erase the stickiness and wash the wrap to get rid of the smell, and none of it would be a big deal. Taping the bandage in place, Clint turned around to see Steve had already stepped into the ring, bare feet leaving impressions on the plastic-coated mats.

Clint took the first swing, and felt better than he had in weeks.

***

Bruce had never been a big drinker. Whenever anyone invited him out for drinks, he usually politely declined, not liking loud, noisy crowds, either. If dragged out kicking and screaming, he might indulge in a beer or something light, but would often stick to Coke. He’d never understood why some people were just hellbent on getting chocolate wasted. Like Tony, for instance. He was definitely the worst out of all of them. Natasha liked her cocktails, but he’d never seen her even tipsy. Thor drank like a fish, but never seemed to show it. Clint would have a drink or two as well, but staunchly refused to get truly drunk. Tipsy seemed to be within reason, though. Steve would have a beer or two, but alcohol just didn’t affect him the way it should. If he hadn’t had his fill of trying to recreate the super-soldier serum, he might be intrigued by the unintended side-effect. God, had that left a bitter taste in his mouth.

But Tony…Tony drank. And drank. And drank. Sometimes he’d slip and get drunk, but for the most part, he seemed to knock them all back like a champ. If it weren’t for the smell, Bruce would have assumed he was drinking apple juice and just pulling the wool over their eyes. And he did take a whiff sometimes, if only because Tony wasn’t _acting_ like it was his fourth glass of whiskey, but he’d been counting. He was never disappointed by the harsh sting that erupted in his nostrils, made his eyes water, and made him scrunch his face up and shove the glass away to cackles. He could say what he would about Tony’s drinking, but at least he chose good, high-quality liquor to get drunk on. The man was never known to do anything by halves anyway.

It was no surprise when Tony disappeared into his lab with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a few wrenches. It was a few days after the fated New York alien invasion, in simplest of terms, and everyone had been taking it hard. Bruce noticed that everyone just seemed a bit more on-edge than usual, and no one was immune. Everyone had their own coping mechanisms, and so he left them to it. Wasn’t his business, he figured. Some people, like Tony, were overt with their coping mechanisms, and that was just fine. Others, like Natasha, were more private. And that was fine, too. Bruce himself preferred some quiet meditation, soothing music, dim lights, maybe some incense. He’d picked up on a few great tips for setting the atmosphere while in India, and he’d managed to sneak a few candles and oils and such past Customs when he re-entered the United States. Tony’s private jet, of course, may have helped him in the matter, but he’d like to pretend it was because people who thought they were good at their job were actually a bit lacking.  
Over the course of the next few days, they saw little of Tony. Every now and then there would be a muffled thud, a fire alarm blaring, and a gratuitous amount of swearing. Tony would emerge in short time, wiping soot and ash from his face and grumbling about something or other, clean himself up, grab a sandwich, and trundle off to the workshop again, in much the same state as when he left. His mind never seemed to quiet down. The funny thing was, though, he seemed to have no desire for it to. Every offer of doing something to relieve stress rather than cause it was promptly and sarcastically shut down, and Tony continued to do as Tony did and go make himself upset with another minor explosion of some sort.

One night, Bruce decided that he’d had enough. Four days in a row and Tony hadn’t seen sunlight or had more than five minutes of human contact, and with Pepper away for the week on business, he took it upon himself to coax Tony out into the world again. After a bit of wheedling, JARVIS allowed Bruce into the lab where Tony was working, where the other scientist entered cautiously, wringing his hands a bit as he cast his gaze about the multiple robots scattered about. Some were still, others were moving-but all of them were a jumbled mess of parts and metal and wiring, and their cold presence unnerved Bruce a bit. It wasn’t healthy for Tony to be sequestered down here for so long, he   
concluded. This was just…too freaky.

“Ah, Big Green! Nice of you to join me, I could use a hand.”

“Well, actually, Tony, I um…I came to get you to put that on hold.”

Tony snorted once as Bruce rounded the corner and finally came into sight, not bothering to look up from the shapeless, haphazard hunk of metal on a table that he was going after with a screwdriver. “Yeah, not happening,” he grunted, grabbing a pair of wire cutters from the random pile on the table next to him and snipping one thin, yellow cord. “I happen to be on a roll.”

Smiling tightly, Bruce did his best to unclench his hands and stop fidgeting. He was well-prepared for this. “We’re getting Thai for dinner. And after that, I think Steve wanted to hit the bar. He said he needed to get out and, ah…be among real people again, I think was what he said.”

“Bring me something back. Spicy chicken of some sort if ya don’t mind.”

The rejection was surprising-since when did Tony turn down Thai?-but Bruce managed to roll with it with a single, slow nod of his head. At least he’d thought ahead. Tony was unpredictable, but at least he was consistently unpredictable. It was about the only thing one could count on with Tony. “Aside from showering, when was the last time you left this place?” Bruce asked, passing the ball back into Tony’s court. Giving him a problem to solve, however menial or trivial, could usually get his attention.

“Four…five…six days ago?”

“Mmhmm. And, ah, what have you been eating?”

“Jack Daniel’s.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Yes it does.”

“Tony…”

“It’s a meal in a bottle! Do you know how many carbs that stuff has?”

“Tony…”

“And don’t even get me started on the calories-”

_“Tony.”_

Tony finally ceased his efforts to make Bruce come around to his line of thinking. With an expression like acknowledgment of but not acceptance of defeat on his face, Tony absently waved the screwdriver around a little bit as if to summon the words he was looking for. Oh, Tony was far from out of words-just out of tact was more like it.

“This is just kind of…what I do.”

“We all know it’s what you do, Tony,” Bruce sighed, his voice even softer than usual. “But you can’t do it all the time, then it just becomes…another addiction, not…whatever you’re trying to get away from. And, you can’t run from this, I…trust me.”

“Yeah?” Tossing the screwdriver aside with clear irritation, Tony set his hands on his hips and gave Bruce an accusing glare. Pinned under the weight of steely gray eyes, Bruce only returned the look with placid smiles and open eyes. “Tell me what you know about running from problems, Bruce Banner.”

“I’ve learned that, not matter how far you run, you can’t ever get away.” Holding his hands out to the side, _am I wrong?_ etched into his face, Bruce continued after a brief pause, “They follow you. Everywhere. Your problems. I spent years buried in Calcutta, and let me tell you…your problems don’t stop chasing just because you’ve stopped running and decided to hide instead. You can bury yourself in…whatever you want. Whatever…this…is.” He stopped to gesture broadly and aimlessly to the walls of the lab and everything in it; then, turning back to Tony with his hands clasped in front of him: “The outside world will still find its way in. And, it’s…usually a lot better of a meeting, if…if you go and greet it head on.”

Tony Stark was never one to admit that someone else was right, or even had a point. But the fact was that Bruce was right and did have a point, and denying it to till the day he died wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t even get Bruce to go away so he could get back to tinkering with his robots. Huffing slightly, shifting his weight back and forth from foot to foot, Tony realized for the first time just how sore his feet actually were. His black sneakers were comfortable, but he’d been doing a lot of running around like crazy on not a lot of sleep and not much rest, either. Taking a break would be good for him, he surmised…but he’d never admit that either. Well, there were ways.

“What would it take to make you all leave me in peace?”

He phrased it like it was a chore for him, like he was doing everyone a great favor by emerging from his lair. And a part of him did want to see what Bruce’s idea of a respite was. But the other part of him was just saving face, and actually did want to come out for a quick meal with the rest of the people in the tower. They were all feeling the strain of the last few weeks, too, and it was only going to get hairier. They might as well enjoy the time they did have together.

“Natasha and Steve want to do dinner and a movie night…come out for the evening and we might let you come back to this tomorrow.”

“All that?” Tony whined, dry sarcasm coloring every note.

“Couple hours of Thai food and The Terminator might make you feel better than driving yourself crazy feels.”

“For the record, I don’t need to drive myself crazy, I’m already there. And besides, crazy is fun.”

Bruce got that smile-and-nod again, the one that said that he was going to say something Tony didn’t like, but he was going to phrase it so that he didn’t get punched by Iron Man. And lo and behold, not a handful of seconds later, Bruce simply muttered, “For some people.”

“Hey, being a giant green rage-monster is fun!” Tony said heartlessly, but he finally discarded his screwdriver and began wiping the grease off his hands with a dingy rag that had clearly seen better days. “Especially the whole ‘indestructible’ part.”

“Not dying is a great side effect,” Bruce conceded, “but I don’t like losing my mind.”

“Just let me know next time you do. I’ll help you find it. It’s probably in cahoots with mine and hiding out somewhere in the Bahamas.” Tossing the rag aside, Tony sighed once, a heavy, heaving thing, and he made sure he looked adequately annoyed at being dragged from his cave before he finally admitted defeat. “Alright, giant green rage monster, take me away.”

This got a chuckle out of Bruce; a genuine chuckle, too, not the nervous type he tended to get when he was trying to diffuse a tense situation. With that smile still lingering, Bruce threw an arm around Tony’s shoulders and pretended to manhandle him around the table and towards the door. There was a bit of playful shoving that only lasted to the door; then, both scientists seemed to get themselves under control and walk out like adults.

That lasted until they got to the kitchen, and someone couldn’t resist a joke about the grease on Tony’s face.

***

It wasn’t often that Thor was in Stark Tower. The majority of his time was spent back home on Asgard, taking care of whatever duties befell the son of Odin. From time to time, though, he would make a brief voyage to Earth. He wanted to experience it in peaceful times, he said, and spend time with his friends and those he cared about without the stress of saving the world interfering with his visiting. So when Tony’s trans-galaxy communications picked up a message from the Norse god announcing his arrival for the next week, he responded immediately and enthusiastically, offering up his tower as lodging for however long Thor was staying.

The first night he arrived, Thor and the rest of the Avengers had sat around the kitchen table sharing drinks, talking, laughing, and catching up for a few hours. They remained there long into the night, until the next day rolled around and the moon had come and gone, leaving only a blanket of stars in its wake. One by one, people went to bed or otherwise excused themselves: Bruce was the first to go, claiming it was time for his meditation hour that he regularly took before bed. Tony went next following a crash somewhere else in the tower, an interlude from JARVIS, and a brief apology for the debacle as he scurried out to deal with whatever DUM-E had knocked over this time. Natasha disappeared next, saying she was tired and was going to go straight to bed. Clint left after that, telling the remaining two men that he was quite drunk enough and wanted to get back to his room while he could still walk decently. After his exit, only Thor and Steve remained, neither one of them remotely drunk. Steve was relieved for this ability; Thor considered it a damn shame.

“Do you not tire as the rest do?” Thor asked, wrapping his hands around the rather large glass mug half-emptied of ale. Tony had procured the enormous drinking glasses (which everyone else referred to as tankards and Thor referred to as “the usual size”) for this occasion specifically. Everyone else had had one or two mugs and called it a night. Thor and Steve were on their fourth each, and neither one of them was anywhere near drunk.

“I mean…I do,” Steve started with a heavy sigh, staring down into the foaming amber liquid in his own glass, “but even if I’m tired, I can’t really sleep all that well.”

Thor offered an understanding smile. “You and I share the same burden, then,” he declared, but pushed his chair back from the table and stood up nonetheless. “Retire anyway, my good man-it will do your mind well to have peace and quiet, if nothing else.” Rounding the table, Thor took a moment to clap a huge paw on Steve’s shoulder, succeeding in shaking the other blonde man. Steve took it with a toothy grin, and turned enough in his seat to be able to look up at a smiling Thor and tell him,  
“Thank you, I just might. Go ahead, I’ll catch up in a minute.”

Thor’s smile widened briefly as he dipped his head once in a nod. Then, he drained the rest of his mug without ceremony, placed the emptied glass in the sink, and turned to move out of the room, only to pause again as he caught sight of something left on the counter. It was a small, sleek, black rectangle, one that he couldn’t discern the meaning or purpose of-it was completely smooth all around, save for a row of three buttons across the bottom.

“What is-?”

“Oh, that’s Natasha’s phone!” Steve interjected, saving Thor the trouble when he saw the bewildered look on his face. “It’s…a communication device. I know, I got weirded out by it too when I first saw it. They looked a lot different in my day.” Holding out a hand, Steve briefly motioned to Thor to come closer, adding, “Here, give it to me, I’ll bring it to her.”

“Do not trouble yourself with the extra trip, I will deliver to the Black Widow,” Thor assured him. “Her quarters are on the way to mine. Where shall I leave it for her?”

“She said she was going to bed, so just ask JARVIS to open her door and leave it in the first room you enter. JARVIS can let her know where it is when she wakes up, right, JARVIS?”  
“Correct, sir,” the proper, British-accented voice echoed. The bewildered look was back on Thor’s face, but Steve just smiled at him. Thor had already met JARVIS, he just had to get used to him now.

“Alright,” Thor acquiesced, but he still looked a bit apprehensive about trusting JARVIS. He didn’t fully understand the AI, and Steve didn’t blame him. He hadn’t at first, either, and to be honest, he still didn’t. But he was at least around enough to get used to it. Thor finally moved out of the kitchen after nervously casting about the room again, futilely searching for the source of the voice. Steve couldn’t withhold a chuckle, but Thor was a good sport about it and just kept walking. It was a sure fact that he’d heard, but Steve appreciated the humor anyway.

Luckily, Thor was able to navigate through Stark Tower largely unassisted. JARVIS redirected him at one wrong turn, and after that, he found himself standing in front of Natasha’s door, which had been painted black with a large red hourglass shape in the center. Thor recalled seeing images of an earth-dwelling insect that bore the same pattern on its body, called the Black Widow spider. That was from whence Natasha had devised her alter ego, he reminded himself. Raising his hand, knuckles to the door, Thor suddenly thought better of the gesture as he remembered Steve’s advice. “JARVIS?” he called, tentatively addressing the thin air.

“Yes, Son of Odin?” came the prompt and polite response.

Thor floundered for a moment, but finally held up the phone as he said, “I came to return Miss Natasha’s phone…would you mind opening the door?”

“Certainly, Son of Odin, but I must remind you that Miss Romanoff has only authorized guests in the main seating area of her quarters. You will not be permitted into any other area.”

“That’s fine, I’ll just leave this for her right inside-”

“Very good, sir.”

There was a click and a hiss as hydraulic locks opened, and then the door slid to the side to admit Thor. Still looking around with that same cautious gaze, Thor entered Natasha’s apartment with a wary step and a sharp gaze. Everything in here looked utterly normal: sleek and modern and chic, if the words of Miss Pepper Potts were anything to go by. He’d never heard décor described in such a way, but then again, he’d never seen such décor to begin with. Stepping into the room, the door hissing shut behind him, Thor was surprised to find that the lights were still on. The kitchen to his right was dark, but the seating area directly ahead was illuminated by soft, cream light spilling from lamps placed around the room. It still felt odd and cold to have such artificial light instead of the beautiful, pure flames of a torch or the warming glow of magic, but Thor pressed on anyway. There was a cream-colored couch facing the wall to his right; in front of it sat a low table, a dark-stained wood with sharp, square corners and a polished look. Everything in here was simple and functional, with no extra flourishes or frills. Thor could appreciate that. It reminded him of his lovely female friend Sif from back home. A warrior woman to the core, she preferred not to waste time or practicality on useless details and frivolous garnishes. Thor found himself smiling at the thought. Natasha was a lovely woman, but he felt like he didn’t really know her sometimes. It was nice that something like this could speak so many volumes about her.

It felt intimate to be staring so deeply into someone else’s life and personality, though, particularly when he got the sense that the person in question was so private to begin with. Hurrying to the table once he had it in his sights, Thor very carefully set the black device, smaller than his palm, down on the smooth wooden surface and straightened again, fully prepared to leave. Something caught his eye, though: movement. Immediately stepping back, his expression changed from wary and watchful to stern and steadfast. Whoever this intruder was, he would defend the slumbering Black Widow from their less-than-pure intentions-!

If it were not the Black Widow herself.

“JARVIS let me know you were coming,” she said simply, walking around the couch to the table and picking up the phone he had left. She was barefoot, and wearing only a pair of soft black pants and a plain black shirt with no sleeves. Her hair, a lovely shade of red-yellow he believed they called “strawberry” in this world, was straight, and hung just below her shoulders. Her face was bare of any makeup or paint, and it left her pale skin to shine through much more honestly.

“I apologize for intruding-” he started, but she smiled then and stopped him with a raised hand.

“No need to apologize. As JARVIS told you, I let people into this space. None of the other rooms, but…this is fine.”

It still felt odd, and his face must have said it all, for she continued to smile at him as she seated herself on the couch, her weight making a crease in the middle. With her free hand, she gestured to the armchair at his right that matched the sofa in color scheme and structure. “Sit,” she said. “It’s fine, I promise! This space is mine, yes, but if it’s mine, it’s mine to give away, no?”

“I suppose,” he conceded, cautiously lowering himself to the chair as wordlessly requested. It felt too soft, like it would swallow him if he leaned back. He leaned forward instead, and rested his elbows on his knees.

She smiled again. “Thank you for bringing this back to me. I didn’t want to go back up there because I was kind of in the middle of something, and I didn’t know if anyone else was as well.”

“You said you were going to sleep?”

This earned him a small hum of amusement. “I say that. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Depends on the night.”

His conversation with Steve came back to him. “And why do you not sleep?”

She shrugged then, a simple, innocent gesture that was far too light for the reason he suspected he’d be getting. “We all have pasts,” she began cryptically. “We’ve all done things. We all…question our choices and wonder if we made the right ones. We all try to make up for the things we’ve done that we…maybe aren’t proud of.”

She was correct, he noted, looking at her with a newfound awe. This woman, barely three decades alive on this world, had incredible insight for any human, let alone someone of her young age. “You speak with great wisdom.”

She shrugged again, once more accompanied by a tight smile. Her bare feet rose to rest on the edge of the table, something that his mother had always told him was rude. But it was her space, and she could do with it as she pleased, he supposed. “Everyone here, we’re all the same,” she offered. “Like I said, we’ve all done things. We aren’t all master warriors at the age of twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five because we had wonderful childhoods and perfect upbringings and healthy starts. We’re all here because…we’re trying to atone for things we’ve done. Tony with his weapons in Afghanistan, you with your brother Loki…”

“And what about you?” he pressed, lacing his fingers together as a small lock of blonde hair slipped forward over his shoulder. “What do you seek to atone for, Black Widow?”  
“It’s Natasha now,” she corrected gently. “But I…gained these skills of mine the hard way. I got involved with the wrong people, got in too deep, and I was on S.H.I.E.L.D.’s radar in a bad way. I suppose I’m not really here to atone, I’m doing that on my own time. I’ve sent markers to everyone I’ve wronged, and from there, it’s their choice if they want my recompense or not. I’m here because I owe someone a debt. He spared my life when he had the chance to take it because he believed in me. He saw that there was more to me than what other people had made me into. So I stay for him, I suppose.”

If Thor had felt like he was intruding on something personal before, he was full-on uncomfortable now. This felt beyond even personal, this felt intimate. Like a bond he could never even dream of sullying, a bond so tender and so sacred that none should ever encroach upon it, let alone gaze upon it. And he hadn’t even the faintest idea who this woman owed her life to. He wouldn’t ask, though. He’d pried too much.

“But what about you?” she suddenly asked, turning her eyes at last from the silent phone to his. Blue met blue in oceans of depth, and he found himself surrendering answers willingly in the wake of her honesty.

“You are correct-I do feel responsible for my brother’s actions. I was a fool-”

“Not that, I know why you’re here. But why can’t you sleep?”

Her tone was flat, level, calm, and plain, but her gaze was intense enough that he could feel it piercing every defense he had. Worse than even Loki’s charm, he felt like she could read him with no fuss and no magic and no power, simply the knowledge she possessed and his willingness to respond to her. For she spoke the truth: she knew why he was here, why he stayed, why he fought alongside them. That, he supposed, was no great secret. But why, like her, was he up and about, wandering the halls at these hours? After minutes of thinking, cycling through different trains of thought and delving deep into his own consciousness, he finally gave up and presented her with the one honest answer he could give with any measure of certainty:

“I do not know.”

***

They’d all gotten the call at one point or another. They would come at two, three, four, five o’clock in the morning, the hours when even they tended to get to sleep. Oftentimes they were torn from sleep, bleary-eyed and slurring words and caught off-guard. If they were lucky, they were awake anyway and could simply answer, voices still weary and exhausted but brains all too awake. The response was always the same, with the same tone of voice, in the same manner. The dialogue was almost always the same, too. It was like he planned it, or someone was playing a prank on them. But they all got it. They just answered the call, did as instructed, and thought nothing more of it. It wasn’t the first, and wouldn’t be the last.

But in the wake of the events of New York, the script changed. Clint rolled over one night, waking to his phone ringing, and could have screamed with frustration. It was the first night in several weeks that he’d actually managed to fall asleep at all, and he hadn’t been expecting to. Hence why his phone was still on to begin with. Or so he said. It was only on because a certain director would tear him a new one if it wasn’t and he missed a call from him. He purposely let the caller wait until he’d gotten a glimpse of the time to answer. It would tell him how angry to be with them. Four fourteen am…four hours of sleep. More than he’d gotten in a while, and he could have gotten more if not for the call. Growling a bit, Clint’s hand slammed down on the polished wood of the nightstand beside his bed, then scraped across the surface, fumbling back and forth until he located his buzzing phone. It insistently and stubbornly continued to ring until he managed to hit the “accept call” button, hold it to his ear, and practically snarl by way of an acknowledgment, “Barton.”

“Agent Barton, You have an assignment.”

“An assignment that couldn’t wait until a human hour of the day?!” Clint snapped.

“Nope.”

Clint received his briefing with a fair bit of grumbling and a cantankerous, sarcastic sneer of acceptance. Fairly straightforward: he needed to apprehend the usual scientist-gone-mad, and the call had been to inform him that his target had wandered right into the New York City area. It was Clint’s opinion that anyone who was rolling into New York at four-fourteen in the morning intended to stay a little while, but apparently not everyone shared his thoughts. Finally rolling out of bed with a bit of prodding, Clint began to roughly assemble clothes with the phone pressed between his shoulder and his ear, listening with as much of his brainpower as he could muster. The most he managed was a steady stream of “yeah…uh-huh…”’s, but his early-morning caller didn’t seem terrible concerned. When at last he had heard the last of the information he needed, Clint began tossing weapons towards the pile of clothes he’d assembled in the middle of the floor, still grumping and grousing a little under his breath. He ended the phone call with, “God damn it, Fury, do you ever sleep?”

“Now, son, you know that I never do,” the other man responded with the sort of bemusement in his voice that made Clint extremely nervous.

“I’m just surprised that you do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I actually wrote this a while ago...almost a year. It was a private commission that I did and kind of never thought about again. But since I unearthed it I figured I'd post it. Enjoy!


End file.
